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Human origins and the transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding.

ABSTRACT: A crucial step in recent theories of human origins is the emergence of strong pair-bonding between males and females accompanied by a dramatic reduction in the male-to-male conflict over mating and an increased investment in offspring. How such a transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding could be achieved is puzzling. Many species would, indeed, be much better off evolutionarily if the effort spent on male competition over mating was redirected to increasing female fertility or survivorship of offspring. Males, however, are locked in a "social dilemma," where shifting one's effort from "appropriation" to "production" would give an advantage to free-riding competitors and therefore, should not happen. Here, I first consider simple models for four prominent scenarios of the human transition to pair-bonding: communal care, mate guarding, food for mating, and mate provisioning. I show that the transition is not feasible under biologically relevant conditions in any of these models. Then, I show that the transition can happen if one accounts for male heterogeneity, assortative pair formation, and evolution of female choice and faithfulness. This process is started when low-ranked males begin using an alternative strategy of female provisioning. At the end, except for the top-ranked individuals, males invest exclusively in provisioning females who have evolved very high fidelity to their mates. My results point to the crucial importance of female choice and emphasize the need for incorporating between-individual variation in theoretical and empirical studies of social dilemmas and behaviors.

SUBMITTER: Gavrilets S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3382477 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Human origins and the transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding.

Gavrilets Sergey S

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20120529 25

A crucial step in recent theories of human origins is the emergence of strong pair-bonding between males and females accompanied by a dramatic reduction in the male-to-male conflict over mating and an increased investment in offspring. How such a transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding could be achieved is puzzling. Many species would, indeed, be much better off evolutionarily if the effort spent on male competition over mating was redirected to increasing female fertility or survivorship of ...[more]

PMID: 22645330

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Project description:Mating strategies in fishes are known to include polygyny, polyandry and monogamy and provide valuable insights regarding powerful evolutionary forces such as sexual selection. Monogamy is a complex of mating systems that has been relatively neglected. Previous work on mating strategies in fishes has often been based on observation and focused on marine species rather than freshwater fishes. SNPs are increasingly being used as a molecular ecology tool in non-model organisms, and methods of probabilistic genetic analysis of such datasets are becoming available for use in the absence of parental genotypes. This approach can be used to infer mating strategies. The long-term pair bonding seen in mammals, reptiles and birds has not been recorded in freshwater fishes-in every other respect an extremely diverse group. This study shows that multi-year pair bonding occurs in an Australian Percichthyid fish that exhibits paternal care of eggs and larvae. Using SNPs, full sibling pairs of larvae were found over multiple years in a three-year study. Stable isotope signatures of the larvae support the genetic inference that full sibling pairs shared a common mother, the ultimate source of that isotopic signature during oogenesis. Spatial and temporal clustering also suggests that the full sibling larvae are unlikely to be false positive identifications of the probabilistic identification of siblings. For the first time, we show multi-year pair bonding in a wild freshwater fish. This will have important conservation and management implications for the species. This approach could provide insights into many behavioural, ecological and evolutionary questions, particularly if this is not a unique case. Our findings are likely to initiate interest in seeking more examples of monogamy and alternative mating strategies in freshwater fishes, particularly if others improve methods of analysis of SNP data for identification of siblings in the absence of parental genotypes.

Dataset Information

Human origins and the transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding.

Publications

Human origins and the transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding.

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